© Pierre Maré,
2004 - 2007
Offbeat 06
My first computer was a Spectrum. In the technical jargon of the day, it was “Like wow, man!” It had a giant 48K memory and a funky, black keyboard with different colored letters at the corner of each key. Brightly coloured keys were vital to holding my attention: it took hours to type in the programs that made my black blob shoot the other black blobs. “Hey look, Ma. I used a green letter!”
Computers have come a long way since the heady days of 1982. Today they have word-processors, spreadsheets, Internet and games that are a lot more colourful, fast and noisy. The difference is that in 1982, computers were modern, exciting and the future. Today, they are one of those dull, inevitable facts of life.
I came into the workplace at the dawn of the workstation. Thanks to my experience with the Spectrum I was the expert. I showed people how to turn the thing on and off, and how to find and double-click the software icon. I was famed for my ability to press all the right buttons in the install routine by simply following the instructions and not freezing up like a rabbit in the headlights. On occasion, I would even troubleshoot. Sometimes hitting the top of the monitor worked.
In those days, using a computer was still slow, if only by the dubious virtue of the stupidity of the user. But users grew smarter and the pace of work speeded up. The joke about ‘wanting it yesterday’ has become a cliché. We started delivering everything yesterday at least a year ago. Getting it all done by tomorrow is now the problem.
The initial promise of the computer was that they would think for us. Unfortunately, this has come true. We seldom take time to stop and think about what we are doing. We assume that everything will be correct at the end of the day: after all, the computer doesn’t have enough imagination to make a serious error and we did read the manual, or at least the index.
Hi-tech, high pace speed may once have been ‘convenient’ but it paradoxically translates into less time for just about everything. It works this way: you have more time, so you can do more. It’s an interesting proposition.
Of course, it’s easy and convenient to blame computers for the rush, but it’s not a particularly comfortable solution. If you or I take the next logical step and introduce our computers to an upstairs window and that other scientific marvel, gravity, life would quickly become complicated, starting with embarrassing questions from our insurers and people calling for all the stuff they wanted yesterday.
Personally, I blame myself for taking the computer at face value and expecting it to work faster than I can think.
Yet I find that I can now overcome the temptation of the keyboard and forgo convenience, with pleasing results. A few years ago, I was reintroduced to the pleasures of a blank sheet of paper. At first my wrist cramped up and I developed a painful callus on my middle finger, but my work tended to be better. I soon switched to a large black marker pen that was easier on the finger and bigger pieces of paper that could accommodate more thoughts.
The slow pace of pen and paper gives me time to think about what I do and organize my thoughts. I am regarded as a bit of an eccentric anachronism and somewhat slow, but what I do earns a certain level of trust. Best of all, the paper doesn’t have a delete button, so if I inadvertently lose an idea I can usually go and scratch through the waste basket. And as I become more accustomed to my pen and paper I become even less dependent on it. I find that now I can often map out trains of thought just by going for a short walk.
Computer and software manufacturers have nothing to fear: the computer will always be convenient for processing, spell checks, layouts, special effects and games. If there is a shortcoming, it lies in our willingness to ignore the fact that short cuts very often do make long delays.
Pick up a pen and paper, and see what you can do with them, today.
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